Raphaël gave a very touching, very unique drasha on Thursday morning — touching, because that’s the kind of person he is, and unique, because it was so physical. In order to understand the opening theme of this parasha, the offering of the first-fruits in the Temple, he built the Temple out of lego, as well as our synagogue, and spoke about the similarities and differences that he noticed. I have to note that this isn’t the first Temple that Raphaël built — a few months ago, speaking about his bar mitzva preparation, he wrote to me “I built the Temple but our cat destroyed it. I’ll build it again because it’s part of our history.” I think that this statement encapsulates so much of the Jewish spirit. Not just the content, but also the form of your drasha, linking physical objects with words in order to better approach abstract concepts, was a very powerful method, also deeply rooted in our tradition.
We see this in the ceremony of the first-fruits itself that you mentioned. There are two parts of this ceremony, one physical and one verbal. One was bringing the object, the fruits of the seven species grown throughout the land, to Jerusalem and in giving them away, recognising all food as a divine gift rather than a product whose production we control. The second commanded act is to recite a text, Mikra Bikkurim, (Deuteronomy 26:3-10) that tells the story of the Jewish people from Abraham until the present moment, with the person reciting the text placing themselves as part of the Jewish story. Other commentators saw this reading of Mikra Bikkurim as a detail of the first-fruit ceremony, but Maimonides insists on it being a divine commandment in its own right. Raphaël’s drasha reminded me of this a bit: the physical object (the lego model) and your verbal interpretation were both different ways of manifesting the same abstract idea that needed a container to be expressed within.
Looking at this commandment to say certain words at a certain time, we can see the roots of the practice of prayer. Often, we’re told that the sacrifices in the Temple in ancient times were replaced by words of prayer today. But a more precise model is that the Temple service consisted both of physical sacrifices and of spoken words, and the words have survived the destruction of the Temple until today. There was a spoken confession that accompanied sin-sacrifices, and words of thanks spoken with the thanks-offerings and so on, and these verbal offerings are both easier and harder than the ancient sacrifices. Easier, because words seem to cost nothing and we can carry them with us easily wherever we go. And harder, because we know that saying what you mean and meaning what you say is rare and difficult in the world today. [Several sources make explicit this connection between the recitation of the first-fruit text and prayer. One midrash (Tanchuma) says that Moses foresaw that a day would come when the Temple would be no more and the firstfruits would cease to be brought, and already instituted daily prayer to replace them. The Sefer Hachinuch (Commandment 606), an anonymous work from 13th-century Catalonia, tries to explain the reason for reading Mikra Bikkurim, and ends up drawing lessons for prayer too, insisting that our language in prayer needs to be precise and reflect our personal situation.]
But actually, the language we usually use in the religious sphere is often imprecise, poetic rather than scientific, which leads us to confusion and contradiction. This is the dilemma I find myself in again and again. I know that the way I read and interpret the Torah isn’t the same as the way everyone else does: that when I speak about Jews as the chosen people, or the creation of the world in six days, I’m speaking a poetic truth and I’m comfortable with that. But how do I argue against those who have more literal fundamentalist readings and say that they are wrong? When I say that women’s participation in all aspects of religious life is coherent with Jewish tradition, I know that there’s a much simpler reading of the tradition that excludes them. If I have to choose between fundamentalist and universalist readings of the same words in the Torah, I need a meta-principle to choose between them, and if that meta-principle is what I follow and believe in, then I don’t really the need the words of the Torah. Once the gates of interpretation have been opened, the trap of moral relativism is set.
I’m not a philosopher and I don’t have a sophisticated way out of this trap, only a naïve one: I just think I’m usually more-or-less right and go with that, even if it’s against the consensus, but I’m also always open to change. This is the time of year, before Rosh Hashana, where we’re meant to do this assessment of what needs to change, both in our behaviour and in our conception of the world. The rabbis fixed the calendar so that this Parasha would always be read two weeks before the new year. In theory, the reason is so that the community can hear the 98 curses, the punishments for disobeying the laws, and this will motivate them to repent. But there might be another reason. There’s a second text in the parasha that is meant to be read out loud, a second set of words that resonate with the liturgy of this time of year. This recitation, which was supposed to be said when people had finished bringing their yearly tithes to the Temple, isn’t called a Mikra, a reading, but a vidui, a confession. This is the confession that the people were meant to make:
וְאָמַרְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְ—הֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בִּעַרְתִּי הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִן־הַבַּיִת וְגַם נְתַתִּיו לַלֵּוִי וְלַגֵּר לַיָּתוֹם וְלָאַלְמָנָה כְּכׇל־מִצְוָתְךָ אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתָנִי לֹא־עָבַרְתִּי מִמִּצְוֺתֶיךָ וְלֹא שָׁכָחְתִּי׃ לֹא־אָכַלְתִּי בְאֹנִי מִמֶּנּוּ וְלֹא־בִעַרְתִּי מִמֶּנּוּ בְּטָמֵא וְלֹא־נָתַתִּי מִמֶּנּוּ לְמֵת שָׁמַעְתִּי בְּקוֹל יְ—הֹוָה אֱ—לֹהָי עָשִׂיתִי כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתָנִי׃
“I have cleared out the consecrated portion from the house; and I have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, just as You commanded me; I have neither transgressed nor neglected any of Your commandments… I have obeyed the LORD my God; I have done just as You commanded me.” (Deuteronomy 26:13-14)
The confession here is: I’ve been great, I’ve done everything right! Who has the audacity to say such a thing? Next week we will begin the Selichot prayers in our synagogue, that will continue until Yom Kippur. As part of these prayers, we’ll also be saying a vidui, a confession. But the one we say is much heavier: ‘we are guilty, we have sinned, we have stolen.’ It might be true, and as I’ve said before, the more we delve into these words the more we find that we do have some responsibility for the collective sins of the society around, if not for ourselves. But in this season of cheshbon nefesh, of making an account of the soul, we sometimes focus only on the negative aspects of our actions. (I’ve never been to a Catholic confession but I imagine it’s the same there!) A real account of who we are and how we want to change in the upcoming year also has to include where we’ve done well, where we’ve made a positive impact on the world. We shouldn’t lie — we mustn’t — but surely part of the teshuva process needs to take our accomplishments into account.
(It might be that instinctively, we don’t allow ourselves only to focus on the weight of the negative parts of our vidui. When we sing it, especially the sefardim, there’s something in the energy in the room where we seem to be confessing that we’re ok, we’re not so bad after all. Here’s a recording from a few nights ago at Adath Shalom:
The words, the emotions and the interpersonal connections as we ‘confess’ together all come together to create the complicated contradiction which we are!)
Towards the end of the 98 curses in the parasha, there’s a sort of summary of why we would be afflicted by all this suffering.
וּבָאוּ עָלֶיךָ כׇּל־הַקְּלָלוֹת הָאֵלֶּה וּרְדָפוּךָ וְהִשִּׂיגוּךָ עַד הִשָּׁמְדָךְ כִּי־לֹא שָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקוֹל יְ—הֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֺתָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו אֲשֶׁר צִוָּךְ… תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָבַדְתָּ אֶת־יְ—הֹוָה אֱ—לֹהֶיךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְטוּב לֵבָב מֵרֹב כֹּל׃
All these curses shall befall you; they shall pursue you and overtake you, until you are wiped out… because you would not serve the LORD your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything. (Deuteronomy 28:45-47)
This text is for me the key of how to live life as a Jew. Joy and abundance. It doesn’t mean walking around with a fake smile all the time, and it doesn’t mean saying that everything is good. (It really isn’t good at the moment, I know.) But it does push us to accept the world as it is and as it has been given to us, without overthinking everything. Like the ceremony of the first-fruits and the words that accompany them, we can’t forget the gifts that we’ve been given, nor the goodness that we’ve brought into the world. Belittling that is as much a problem as not wanting to change ourselves or the world around us.